Joan Wickersham is the author of four books, including The Suicide Index, a National Book Award finalist. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has published essays and reviews in the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and the International Herald Tribune, and she has contributed on-air essays to National Public Radio. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo.
PRAISE FOR THE SUICIDE INDEX
Written in the form of an index, an acknowledgment of Wickersham's
inability to frame her father's act in any conventional linear
form, this memoir is written in a cool, economical and ultimately
piercing style utterly devoid of easy pathos or cliché. Anyone
prone to facile dismissal of the memoir as literary high art should
be silenced by the perfection of Wickersham's prose and her ability
to hold the facts and her feelings up to the light, turning them
again and again to reveal yet another facet of grief, anger, love,
pity and guilt. -- Laura Miller, Salon.com [A] remarkable memoir. .
. she exposes the whole messy territory of inheritance, of
heritage, of what our families leave us, the treacherous trail of
genetics and psychology and unhappiness, the legacy of all those
generations as they play out in ways that we can see and ways that
we will never see across the patterns of our lives. . . true in a
way that transcends mere recollection . . . (S)he arrives at an
almost perfect balance, producing a survivor's story, a portrait of
suicide from the outside, one that finds clarity in its inability
to be clarified. -- David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Honest, brave,
incredibly moving, and completely unflinching in its honesty. It's
one of those rare books that will haunt you for a long time after
you finish it. . . . Wickersham's writing is gorgeous, restrained
and lyrical at the same time, and there's not an extraneous word or
ounce of fat in the book. In trying to comprehend what happened,
Wickersham uses the format of an index, in an attempt to impose an
order and shape on what appears to be a chaotic, perhaps random,
act of her father's. . . . [An] amazing memoir. -- Nancy Pearl,
KUOW / National Public Radio Joan Wickersham's deceptively simple
organization of this volume packs a hard jab to the throat, and I
found myself alternately holding my breath and looking away from
the words on the page in stunned silence, Reading this book is a
physical act - of beauty, of pain and of frankness. The sections on
writing and truth are some of the finest I've seen. - Kelly
McMasters, Newsday Joan Wickersham's deeply moving memoir seeks to
comprehend the incomprehensible . . . What propels every intensely
crafted page of this book is Wickersham's relentless drive to
comprehend her father's suicide . . . Wickersham has journeyed into
the dark underworld inside her father and herself, and has emerged
with a powerful, gripping story. -- Chuck Leddy, Boston Globe [A]
daughter's piercing and profoundly considered response to [her
father's] death. She constructs her book like a series of index
cards, with chapter headings that mimic those on outlines. It
becomes a brilliant choice, allowing Wickersham to flip and sort
through 15 years of what William Maxwell observed when he wrote,
'The suicide doesn't go alone, he takes everybody with him.' . . .
Against the violent transgression of suicide, Wickersham has
crafted a consummately subtle book. . . . In its discipline and
art, The Suicide Index has the feel of a classic. -- Karen Long,
Cleveland Plain Dealer I read The Suicide Index with a rapacity
bordering on need, with tears in my chest and in my eyes.
Occasionally I had to put it down and leave the room. More often, I
devoured it. The book is . . . the measured, elegant, gripping work
of a professional writer who has set her powers of observation to
work on her own family -- her parents and grandparents, her uncle,
her sister, her husband, her son -- and on herself. -- Laura
Collins-Hughes, New York Sun [A]n extraordinary, magical mystery
tour of a book. -- Heller McAl --
PRAISE FOR THE SUICIDE INDEX
Written in the form of an index, an acknowledgment of Wickersham's
inability to frame her father's act in any conventional linear
form, this memoir is written in a cool, economical and ultimately
piercing style utterly devoid of easy pathos or cliche. Anyone
prone to facile dismissal of the memoir as literary high art should
be silenced by the perfection of Wickersham's prose and her ability
to hold the facts and her feelings up to the light, turning them
again and again to reveal yet another facet of grief, anger, love,
pity and guilt. -- Laura Miller, Salon.com [A] remarkable
memoir. . . she exposes the whole messy territory of inheritance,
of heritage, of what our families leave us, the treacherous trail
of genetics and psychology and unhappiness, the legacy of all those
generations as they play out in ways that we can see and ways that
we will never see across the patterns of our lives. . . true in a
way that transcends mere recollection . . . (S)he arrives at an
almost perfect balance, producing a survivor's story, a portrait of
suicide from the outside, one that finds clarity in its inability
to be clarified. -- David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Honest,
brave, incredibly moving, and completely unflinching in its
honesty. It's one of those rare books that will haunt you for a
long time after you finish it. . . . Wickersham's writing is
gorgeous, restrained and lyrical at the same time, and there's not
an extraneous word or ounce of fat in the book. In trying to
comprehend what happened, Wickersham uses the format of an index,
in an attempt to impose an order and shape on what appears to be a
chaotic, perhaps random, act of her father's. . . . [An] amazing
memoir. -- Nancy Pearl, KUOW / National Public Radio Joan
Wickersham's deceptively simple organization of this volume packs a
hard jab to the throat, and I found myself alternately holding my
breath and looking away from the words on the page in stunned
silence, Reading this book is a physical act - of beauty, of pain
and of frankness. The sections on writing and truth are some of the
finest I've seen. - Kelly McMasters, Newsday Joan
Wickersham's deeply moving memoir seeks to comprehend the
incomprehensible . . . What propels every intensely crafted page of
this book is Wickersham's relentless drive to comprehend her
father's suicide . . . Wickersham has journeyed into the dark
underworld inside her father and herself, and has emerged with a
powerful, gripping story. -- Chuck Leddy, Boston Globe [A]
daughter's piercing and profoundly considered response to [her
father's] death. She constructs her book like a series of index
cards, with chapter headings that mimic those on outlines. It
becomes a brilliant choice, allowing Wickersham to flip and sort
through 15 years of what William Maxwell observed when he wrote,
'The suicide doesn't go alone, he takes everybody with him.' . . .
Against the violent transgression of suicide, Wickersham has
crafted a consummately subtle book. . . . In its discipline and
art, The Suicide Index has the feel of a classic. -- Karen
Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer I read The Suicide
Index with a rapacity bordering on need, with tears in my
chest and in my eyes. Occasionally I had to put it down and leave
the room. More often, I devoured it. The book is . . . the
measured, elegant, gripping work of a professional writer who has
set her powers of observation to work on her own family -- her
parents and grandparents, her uncle, her sister, her husband, her
son -- and on herself. -- Laura Collins-Hughes, New York
Sun [A]n extraordinary, magical mystery tour of a book. --
Heller McAl --
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